Instead, Wales’s fully-committed defence managed to shackle them and emerge with the momentum-
building that brought the No 1 world ranking with it.
But England may have a trick up their sleeve if Jones’s demeanour afterwards is anything to go by.
Following all seven of England’s previous defeats in the 41 matches under the Australian’s tenure, Jones has
taken the blame in failing to prepare the team sufficiently to tackle the task at hand, but there was none of
that this time around.
“Today was almost the perfect World Cup prep game for us,” he said. “We deliberately set it up, putting our
young team out to test their mentality. I thought they handled it well.
“They went in at half-time and we had to show plenty of fight because everything was going their [Wales’s]
way, the penalty county was 8-2, they were getting the rub of the green, the bounce of the ball, we had to
find a way to get back in the game and I was really pleased with the way that we did. Those are the best
World Cup prep games.”
Wales were able to negate England's power
game (Getty)Selection is not the only thing that Jones has held back so far. On Saturday we got a first glimpse of captain
Owen Farrell, first-choice hooker Jamie George and Kyle Sinckler - a man who will be hugely influential in
how they get on in Japan. They have also held back significant parts of their game plan if what Jones and the
players went by is to be believed. That’s rather handy, given Wales found a way to nullify their power game
that has been built around the scrum and maul in their last two matches. With Jones ready to deploy his big
guns against Ireland this weekend and no doubts around his selection having already named the 31-man
squad for the World Cup, we may see something a little bit closer to the genuine England.
“That’s what these games are for,” Jones added. “We went in with a particular strategy, we wanted to get
our maul stronger and obviously the defence knows what you are going to do. If you add a few variations, it
becomes harder to defend.
“We’ve deliberately tried to play through our set-piece the last two weeks and play a power game. I wanted
to test that out to see where we needed to improve. And we’ve got some good improvements in our scrum.
“We’ll definitely have a different selection strategy and definitely have a difference in the way we want to
play [against Ireland].”